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In the Hollywood version of “The Monuments Men,” Matt Damon, George Clooney and John Goodman portray art professionals-turned-soldiers who searched for and recovered treasures that the Nazis looted in Europe during World War II.If filmmakers were searching for additional men who performed that role, they could have looked to three soldiers from Buffalo. Andrew C. Ritchie, …

In the Hollywood version of “The Monuments Men,” Matt Damon, George Clooney and John Goodman portray art professionals-turned-soldiers who searched for and recovered treasures that the Nazis looted in Europe during World War II.If filmmakers were searching for additional men who performed that role, they could have looked to three soldiers from Buffalo. Andrew C. Ritchie, …

Something terrible happened to Dylan Farrow. Profoundly terrible – way beyond the borders of ordinary middle-class calamity.The trouble is that none of us is ever likely to know exactly what.Either she was sexually assaulted by Woody Allen at age 7 in the attic while she kept her eyes riveted to a toy train. Or she was brainwashed by her mother, Mia Farrow, and coached to …

You could joke with Philip Seymour Hoffman.Which is to say nothing about him seemed like you were talking to one of the greatest living actors in American movies – not the paunchy, everyday-looking schlub he looked like or the easy, candid, often jolly way he talked, either.When he laughed, he laughed hard – the big booming laugh of a man who loved to enjoy life as much as…

NEW YORK – Philip Seymour Hoffman, perhaps the most ambitious and widely admired American actor of his generation, died Sunday at an apartment in Greenwich Village, apparently from a drug overdose. He was 46.Hoffman was found in the apartment by a friend, David Bar Katz, who became concerned after being unable to reach him.Investigators found a syringe in his left forearm,…

“So” is how “That Awkward Moment” begins every “awkward moment.” As in “So, what are we doing here?” Or “So, where do you see this relationship going?”That’s the dating man’s lesson of “That Awkward Moment,” that “For girls, nothing good ever comes after ‘So.’ ” It’s a chatty romantic comedy in the modern mode – rude, nude and crude – with some funny, writerly riffs on rel…

Joyce Maynard won’t let me finish a question.Since avidity has characterized the writer’s 60 years on earth, why should a 15-minute telephone conversation be any different?This, after all, was once an indefatigable student writer who now reports taking buses from New Hampshire to New York at the ripe old age of 14 to discuss her professional future with the editors at Seve…

It was a friend of film critic Molly Haskell – whose book about female roles in movies “From Reverence to Rape” remains definitive decades later – who explained the weird paradox of “rape fantasies” being prominent in female fantasy romances.The name is something of a misnomer, says Haskell. Such fantasies seldom if ever involve real violence or defiling horror, said Haske…

Walt Disney may have missed out on an Oscar nomination for the surprisingly ignored “Saving Mr. Banks” – err, Tom Hanks, I mean – but Mickey Mouse did not. In fact, Mickey’s latest cartoon, “Get a Horse!,” which runs before the smash hit “Frozen,” is the likely winner in the animated short film category.“Get a Horse!,” a clever, surprisingly bold film that is best describe…

The most obvious thing to say about Paolo Sorrentino’s “The Great Beauty” (“La Grande Bellezza”) is that it is usually considered the leading candidate to snag an Oscar for best foreign film in March.And that is a great injustice. But then the Oscar for best foreign film is a great continuing scandal that no one seems to have the slightest inclination to change. The scanda…

ORLANDO, Fla. – Writer-director Ron Krauss ran through more than a few Hollywood starlets in trying to cast the homeless pregnant teen, Apple, in his debut feature film – “Gimme Shelter.” He’d spent more than a year getting to know such women and those who ran the Several Sources Shelters in New Jersey, the project had become a cause to him and he had to get this casting r…

ORLANDO, Fla. – Writer-director Ron Krauss ran through more than a few Hollywood starlets in trying to cast the homeless pregnant teen, Apple, in his debut feature film – “Gimme Shelter.” He’d spent more than a year getting to know such women and those who ran the Several Sources Shelters in New Jersey, the project had become a cause to him and he had to get this casting r…

While we wait for word on the fate of the Market Arcade Film & Arts Centre (639 Main St.), it’s good to know that the long-running and very popular Buffalo Film Seminars returns there on Tuesday. The weekly film series, led by University at Buffalo faculty members Bruce Jackson and Diane Christian, opens at 7 p.m. Tuesday with Josef von Sternberg’s 1927 silent gangster fil…

“Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit” (PG-13): Teens may scoff at the outlandish computer acrobatics in “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit,” but they’re still likely to get a kick out of this slightly jingoistic spy thriller. It imagines a new, post-Soviet Cold War that mixes terror with financial chicanery. While one violent confrontation gets pretty intense, most of the mayhem is more imp…

While we wait for word on the fate of the Market Arcade Film & Arts Centre (639 Main St.), it’s good to know that the long-running and very popular Buffalo Film Seminars returns there on Tuesday. The weekly film series, led by University at Buffalo faculty members Bruce Jackson and Diane Christian, opens at 7 p.m. Tuesday with Josef von Sternberg’s 1927 silent gangster fil…